


Like tiny drops of rain

by the_great_kate_weather_machine



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Slow Burn, also luna speaks welsh because I want her to, ginny is dumb and in love but she doesn't know it, gratuitous amounts of welsh countryside, soft farmcore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:15:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21532066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_great_kate_weather_machine/pseuds/the_great_kate_weather_machine
Summary: So she's staying at Muriel's house for the summer with nothing but sheep for company. And her aunt loves to criticize her, and it's always raining, and everyone else is off doing something useful for the war, and Ginny's stuck here.But there's this girl...(heavily inspired by Welsh pop songs, the idea of Ginny Weasley in crop tops, and my own intense desire to live in a cottage by the sea)
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Like tiny drops of rain

Ginny lay flat on her back, staring absent-mindedly at the sky. She heaved a sigh.

“The problem with Voldemort is that he just...never stops fucking you over, y’know? Like - he fucking  _ sucks _ .  _ So _ much.”

“Fascinating take on our political climate, that is, Gin.”

“Have you tried talking to the minister, by chance? Writing an op-ed in the Prophet?”

“Oh, fuck off, I’m not even wrong.”

The caravan windows were wide open, and the old linen curtains fluttered feebly in the summer heat. The three of them - Fred and George having stopped by Muriel’s for the afternoon - were languishing on the bed sandwiched neatly between the narrow walls. It was Ginny’s bed now, and Ginny’s caravan, for the time being at least. She’d barely made it a week in the main house before she just about lost her mind - there being an  _ incident  _ involving a certain goblin-made teaspoon that honestly, Ginny thought Muriel was better off without, it was that god awful- but it didn’t matter now. She stayed in the caravan and slept half the day, waking up when the Prophet to try and sift through the bullshit for a hint of something worth reporting on. Which reminded her-

“Any news on our favorite trio?”

“Well...no, not yet. But I promise we’ll floo you,” George started,

“-the absolute second we hear a single thing,” Fred finished, his freckled face uncharacteristically soft.

Ginny nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

They stayed in the caravan until dusk began to fall, never talking much. The place wasn’t in too bad a shape, all things considered. It was clean and bright, windows opening up to the field where Muriel’s neighbor kept sheep. The bed was ancient though, with musty sheets and broken springs, so that as the afternoon progressed they slowly slid together, jumbling into one tired pile right in the center. Ginny lay with her head on George’s elbow and her foot wedged underneath Fred’s thigh, sweating as she paged listlessly through Ron’s sixth year Standard Book of Spells.

“Ginny! Fred! George! Supper’s ready!”

“We’d better go, Muriel’s bound to start hexing the place if she thinks we’re not quick enough,” Ginny grumbled.

Until that night, dinner company had consisted of Muriel, Ginny, and her mother. It went without saying that the addition of the twins was, possibly quite literally, life-saving. After all, Muriel  _ did _ love any and every excuse to hex anything and everything in sight. Her tall goblet of elf wine didn’t exactly help things, either.

“Ginevra, do remember to collect the eggs tomorrow. Your mother had to do it this morning, at her age!” (Ginny noticed Molly stiffen in her chair). “I won’t have you holed up all day long in that old den of a caravan Fabian insisted on leaving here. And you boys-” Fred and George grinned, “still selling your little tricks, eh? Hmph. Some would say it’s a bit indecent, wouldn’t they, carrying on with your rubber wands and such at a time like this.”

“Y’know, Mur, I reckon you’re right,” Fred said, with his best look of faux-concern. “I was just saying to Georgie here the other day that the real proper thing to do would be to shut it all down, so we could devote more time to sitting around in appropriately grave silence. For the  _ war _ .” 

Ginny snorted.

“Fred” her mother warned. “There’s no need for that tone.” 

The three shared a grin as Muriel sent them a particularly dour look from her place at the head of the table. Unfortunately for all involved, she quickly brushed off the slight and busied herself with wine and tales of her unbearable neighbor, who had recently been so bold as to try growing a mustache.

“He simply hasn’t the chin for it!” Muriel remarked, looking almost joyful at the thought. “Of course, it’s a miracle he’s grown anything at all, judging by the state of his  _ head _ . Speaking of which, Molly - did you ever give Arthur that hair-growth potion I recommended? He was looking downright ancient at the wedding, so I thought I’d-”

Molly had grown rather flushed. “No, I haven’t yet, Muriel. We hardly left the house before coming here, actually. What with the security measures and general  _ state of things _ .” 

Fred, George, and Ginny excused themselves.

*****

The next morning, Ginny woke up tasting salt. Dense, gray fog pressed at the windows of the caravan, seeping through the cracks and leaving her skin clammy under the tangle of covers. It wasn’t uncommon, them being as close to the sea as they were, but Ginny had yet to get used to it. She lay in bed for a while longer, curled up in a cocoon of sheets, trying not to think about her brother, Hermione,  _ Harry _ , where they were sleeping, or whether they were sleeping at all. 

Shaking those thoughts from her head, Ginny sat up and rolled out of bed, cursing as her bare feet touched the icy floor of the caravan. There was no insulation to speak of, just a meager warming charm cast weeks ago that Ginny was pretty sure had worn off by now. She pulled on an old pair of joggers and the thickest sweater she could find, which happened to be a violent shade of maroon. It was days like these when “summer in Wales” seemed to be an especially ironic oxymoron. 

Ginny struck out in the direction of the house, head hunched against the cold dampness of the early morning. She kicked off her boots at the door, earning another scowl from Muriel, and poured a hasty bowl of cereal before sitting down cross-legged on the aga to eat it. Without Fred and George visiting, her day stretched out in front of her in an empty, foggy haze. Muriel usually had neighbors over to tea in the afternoon, but with the whispers of death eaters hovering around, not even the promise of vicious gossip could pull the old bats out of the safety of their homes.

That's what they were, after all. Utterly safe. And Ginny didn't want to sound ungrateful, she knew she could have it worse - circumstances being as they were, she couldn't really expect to have it much better, really. But all the same-

Finishing her cereal, she gave Muriel a terse nod and headed back out to the caravan, shucking her thick overlayers and digging into the back of her trunk for more appropriate clothes. Ten minutes later she was hopping the crumbling stone wall that bordered the property and heading off down the twisting lane. 

Her feet made a quiet drum against the soft dirt of the road, and the morning started to feel peaceful. Running had become a habit ever since they’d arrived, and she savored the blissful numbness that only long miles could bring, the way the green fields and faraway ocean made her forget the destruction unfolding across Britain. It hurt, sometimes - the cold air against the heat of her throat, or the burning that spread up her thighs when she pushed too hard, losing herself in the harsh seaward winds and stark blue sky. But it was worth it for the sleep it brought.

They’d been here two weeks exactly. In that time, they’d received, in total, eight different letters. Six of them were written, at least in part, to send news of the death of someone Ginny or Molly knew. The only ones that didn’t were from Hogwarts, which was, in a way Ginny couldn’t articulate, somehow more jarring. They hadn’t talked about Ginny going back to school yet. She figured she would, given the fuss her mum had made about those three skipping off, but the whole thing seemed sickeningly pointless. 

That’s what everything was this summer - a fat waste of time. The twins were running their black-market joke shop, the order was mobilizing, Ron, Harry, and Hermione were off doing...well  _ something _ important, and here she was, jogging through an old cow pasture, half-wishing Muriel was having company over for tea.  _ Pathetic _ . They’d meant to stay at home initially, which Ginny would’ve vastly preferred. But after the disaster of the wedding, not even the burrow felt secure. Even if not much could be said for the company of North Wales, at least the wards around the house Muriel kept in it were impeccable.

*****

The next couple of days passed by indistinguishable from one another. The fog hovered long enough that it condensed and turned into rain, making a racket on the caravan’s metal roof and managing to soak Ginny’s socks every time she trekked across the lawn to the relative warmth of the main house. Molly forbade her from running, so she developed her own exercise routine to be performed indoors. And if she purposefully made it a bit obnoxious, was she really to blame? Muriel, who Ginny had heretofore thought incapable of reaching new lows, had recently stopped bothering to greet her at all, instead starting conversations with her most pressing complaint about Ginny’s general being.

“Morning, Mur,” Ginny would grumble, hanging her wet clothes clothes by the fire as Muriel looked on from a nearby armchair.

“Well, look at that get-up. You dress rather like your brothers, don’t you? I can’t see why - it doesn’t suit your frame in the slightest. And mind you don’t let that drip on my best rug! Unicorn hair, that silver edging is.”

Later, Ginny took a particularly vindictive pleasure thundering up and down the stairs (for cardio!!) as Muriel yelled up at her to stop making such a racket. Ginny would make a racket if she damn well pleased.

Eventually, after Ginny had grown truly sick of push-ups and cardio and practicing defensive spells, the rain let up. 

“I’m going flying!” she called to Molly, not waiting for a response as she dashed out the door. The morning was overcast but dry, the breeze warm and brisk. Perfect flying weather. Shouldering her broom, she took off down the path to the old mill. The river that used to run alongside the building had been diverted years ago, leaving the mill defunct as it was eclipsed by the nearby town’s bigger factories. Now the mill lay empty and trees grew wild in the riverbed, proving the perfect shelter for a one-woman quidditch practice - provided she didn’t fly too high.

Ginny arrived at the crumbling, ivy-covered remnants of the mill. Yet just as she went to kick off from the ground, a flash of movement caught her eye. She dropped her broom. There was a girl there - sitting on the dry banks of the riverbed, head tilted up as if concentrating intently on the trees dipping in the wind. Something in her must have alerted her to another presence, though, for her turned around suddenly to face Ginny. There was something otherworldly about her face, and Ginny felt her stomach give a strange lurch. Who  _ was  _ this girl? She stared, and her wide blue eyes seemed to take in Ginny in her entirety. She found herself too stunned to utter hello. 

The girl broke eye contact, gazing at something above her head. Looking up, Ginny saw her broomstick hovering twenty feet in the air, remembered, as if in a daze, that she’d dropped it several seconds earlier.

“Oh,  _ fuck _ . Um, I guess I’ll-” she fumbled for her wand, but before her fingers closed around it she heard the mystery girl utter a few lyrical, intelligible words, and her broomstick drifted lazily back down to earth. As Ginny grabbed it, she realized her fingers were trembling slightly.

“Hey, er, thanks for that. Uh- do you live around here? I’m only visiting for the summer, but I didn’t know there were any other witches nearby. I-” Here she forced herself to shut up, because the girl had turned around and was hurrying into the undergrowth. A moment passed and she was gone. What the  _ fuck _ .

*****

Ginny waited until dinner to bring up the strange girl in the woods. They’d just sat down to what promised to be another exceedingly dull meal of chicken-and-potatoes (Muriel’s batty old house elf, Mona, had a very limited range) when Ginny decided she couldn’t wait any longer.

“You never told me there was a witch my age living nearby,” she said, trying to keep her voice from sounding overly-accusatory. It must not have worked, for Muriel bristled under her tower of hair.

“Of course I did! Haven’t we just had Myrna and Marjorie over for tea? And they say  _ I’m  _ the senile one…”

“I’m not talking about the Pennihans, and besides, they’re like twelve-”

“Thirteen!”

“-okay, thirteen, but either way they’re immature and possibly the dullest human beings I’ve ever met. I meant the other girl, though - she’s got, uh, really pale blond hair and kinda has a spooked look in her eyes, dunno why. I just saw her today, thought it was weird she didn’t introduce herself.” For some reason, Ginny felt like she was blushing. She took a long gulp from her water glass and emerged to see Muriel looking thoughtful.

“Blond and odd, hmm...Ah! Must’ve been that Lovegood girl. Now, that girl’s a bit cracked up if I’ve ever seen one. Hadn’t thought of her in ages, really, her family’s not the sort one has over to tea, you know. Delusional, some would call them. And hardly speak a lick of English, either - the English never bothered their type, saw it was best to leave them to their own devices.”

“What  _ do  _ they speak?”

“Welsh,” Molly added, looking rather surprised at herself. “I- I actually used to be friends with the mother, Pandora her name was. Lovely girl, even if we couldn’t talk much. She died young, too, I think. Horribly sad for Luna. And they always kept her so isolated - that’s probably why she didn’t speak to you, dear.”

“Oh.”

Ginny lingered over her food after the other two had left the table, her head still spinning. The odd girl at the mill had a mother, a language, a name. Luna. It suited her, Ginny mused.  _ Luna _ . 


End file.
